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Liza Donnelly, The New Yorker Magazine

Cartoonist

Biography

Liza Donnelly is a contract cartoonist and writer with The New Yorker Magazine, where she has been drawing cartoons about culture and politics for over thirty years. She is also a columnist and cartoonist for Forbes.com, specializing in politics and women’s rights. Donnelly is also a featured weekly political cartoonist for Medium. Her writing and cartoons have also appeared on Politico, HuffingtonPost, DailyBeast, WashingtonPost, and Salon. She has been profiled globally in numerous publications and her work has been exhibited around the world. In 2014, Donnelly received an honorary doctorate from University of Connecticut, where she delivered the commencement address to the Graduate School ceremony.

Donnelly is a Cultural Envoy for the US State Department, traveling around the world speaking about freedom of speech, cartoons and women’s rights. As a public speaker, Donnelly has also spoken at TED (Technology Entertainment and Design), the United Nations, and The New Yorker Festival, the Thurber House, and the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists annual convention, Vassar College, Bard College, Brown University, The Omega Institute, The Society of Illustrators, The Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art, The Norman Rockwell Museum, among other places. Donnelly was profiled on CBS Sunday Morning, NBC and BetterTV, and has been interviewed on radio and in numerous magazines, newspapers and online. Donnelly’s cartoons and commentary can be seen on various websites: the NewYorker.com; CNN.com; HuffingtonPost.com; Salon.com; DailyBeast.com; WomensEnews.org; NarrativeMagazine.com. Her work has appeared in print publications, including The New York Times, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, The Nation and The Harvard Business Review.

Donnelly is the author/editor of fifteen books. Her most recent book is Women On Men, a collection of her cartoons and writing which was a finalist for the well known humor award in 2014, The Thurber Prize. Before that, she published When Do They Serve The Wine? The Folly, Flexibility and Fun of Being a Womanand she also wrote Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons, a history of the women who drew cartoons for the magazine, Sex and Sensibility: Ten Women Examine the Lunacy of Modern Love in 200 Cartoons and Cartoon Marriage: Adventures in Love and Matrimony with the New Yorker’s Cartooning Couple (with Michael Maslin).

Donnelly wrote an article on New Yorker cartoonist Helen Hokinson that appeared in a November, 2002 issue of The New Yorker.

Donnelly conceived of and edited three collections of cartoons for Ballantine Books called Mothers and Daughters, Fathers and Sons and Husbands and Wives (the last two with Michael Maslin). Husbands and Wives and another collection for Andrews and McMeel entitled Call Me When You Reach Nirvana were collections of Ms. Donnelly’s and Mr. Maslin’s cartoons. She has illustrated numerous adult humorous books as well.

In the area of childrens’ books, Donnelly wrote and illustrated seven books for Scholastic, Inc. They are: Dinosaur Day, Dinosaur Beach, Dinosaurs’ Halloween, Dinosaur Garden, Dinosaur Thanksgiving, Dinosaur Christmas, Dinosaurs’ Valentine. The series sold over two million copies. The series is being reprinted digitally for Star Walk Kids Media. Donnelly will publish two new children’s books with Holiday House in 2015.

Donnelly’s book, When Do they Serve the Wine? was optioned by Mark Gordon Studios for an hour long comedy for television; and the book she wrote with her husband, Cartoon Marriage, has been optioned by Jennifer Garner for ABCStudios. She is at work on a new pilot.

She is a charter member of an international project, Cartooning for Peace, helping to promote understanding around the world through humor; and is one of the founding members of USA FECO, the US chapter of the international cartoonists’ organization FECO. She conceived of and is editor for World Ink, a site of international cartoons from contributors around the globe (WorldInk.com) and has curated several exhibits of international cartoonists, here and abroad. Donnelly taught at Vassar College and the School of Visual Arts and is a member of PEN, Authors Guild and the National Cartoonist Society. She is the recipient of an honorary degree from the University of Connecticut, received the Salon St. Just, France International Prize, the Woman of Distinction Prize from the American Association of University Women; and was a member the jury of the World Press Cartoon Prize in Lisbon, the Cartooning for Peace Prize in Geneva in 2012 and 2014, and the Aydin Dogan International Cartoon Competition in Istanbul, Turkey. Her cartoons are in the Library Of Congress Prints and Drawings Collection, the Society Of Illustrators Collection and private collections.

Communication and storytelling are foundations of business, marketing, social media, and professional success. Our guest, Liza Donnelly, is a cartoonist and writer with The New Yorker Magazine, where she has been drawing cartoons about culture and politics for over thirty years.